winter was found to be "loaded."]

Quartz mills were nearly all run by steam and the fuel was pine wood cut
from the mountain sides, every one taking from these public domains
whatever he wanted. The principal features of our mill were twelve large
pestles or stamps, weighing 500 pounds each, which were raised up about
eighteen inches by machinery and dropped into huge iron mortars onto
the small pieces of rock which were constantly fed into them by a man
with a shovel. A small stream of water was let into the mortars, and as
the rock was crushed into fine sand and powder it went out with the
water, through fine screens in front, and passed over long tables, a
little inclined, and then over woolen blankets. The tables were covered
with large sheets of brightly polished copper. On these polished plates,
quicksilver was sprinkled and it was held to the copper by the affinity
of the two metals for each other. As the water and powdered rock passed
over the tables, the quicksilver, by reason of its chemical attraction
for gold, would gather up the fine particles of that metal and, as the
two combined, would gradually harden and form an amalgam, somewhat
resembling lead. Coarser grains of gold would lodge in the blankets,
owing to their weight, while the small particles of rock would pass
over with the water. The amalgam was put into a retort and heated over a
fire, when the quicksilver would pass off in vapor through a tube into a
vessel of water, and then condense, to be again used, while the gold
would be left in the retort, to be broken up into small pieces and used
as current money. In order to save as much of the gold as possible,
these copper plates required close watching, constant care and much
rubbing to remove the verdigris that would form.

About the first of November our mill was completed, and we expected to
operate it a good part of the winter with the quartz of other miners,
together with that which we would take out ourselves from our own mines.
A large well, or underground cistern, was dug under the mill house,
which was fed by copious springs, and promised to furnish an abundant
supply of water. To furnish water for the numerous mills about Mountain
City and in Nevada gulch a large ditch had been dug, which started up in
the mountains near the Snowy range, and wound like a huge serpent around
promontories and the sides and heads of numerous gulches, with a slight
incline, for some fifteen miles. It passed a